WASHINGTON, D.C.  It would seem that using the music of John Cage as a vehicle, in the same way a soloist might use a 19th century concerto to demonstrate the salient aspects of his or her musical personality, would be all but impossible.

Many of Cage’s instrumental works require considerable virtuosity, but they are largely devoid of ego. That was Cage’s point in using chance to determine certain musical parameters in some of his works.

But as French cellist Alexis Descharmes demonstrated Sept. 5 in his contribution to the John Cage Centennial Festival Washington, DC, not even Cage is immune from a performer’s personality and preferences.

On the day that marked the 100th anniversary of John Cage’s birth, Descharmes’ performance at the House of France, DC, was one of two intriguing if contrasting concerts.

At midday, the National Gallery offered a thoughtful concert that included many of the same performers who collaborated with Descharmes (and a brief appearance by the cellist himself): pianist Jenny Lin, clarinetist Bill Kalinkos and violinst Lina Bahn. Also on the National Gallery of Art New Music Ensemble program: flutist Lisa Cella and UC San Diego’s Ross Karre, Jaime Oliver, Dustin Donahue and Bonnie Whiting Smith.

The concert effectively placed Cage in the context of Schoenberg (briefly Cage’s teacher), Christian Wolff (a colleague) and David Felder (one of several contemporary composers who were invited to write short pieces for the festival).

It opened with Cage’s 1940 “Living Room Music,” which immediately confounded your expectations. After Donahue, Smith, Karre and Descharmes tapped and vocalized (making you wonder if Cage’s music was also, among other things, a precursor to rap music), Descharmes picked up his cello and played a soaring, rhapsodic melodic line unlike anything you might expect from Cage, as Donahue, Smith and Karre resumed their pinging.

The balance of the program was structured around Lin’s sensitive performances of Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces, Opus 19 (presented in pairs) and recordings of Cage reading six brief stories from “Indeterminacy” (also offered in pairs). In between, Felder’s electronic “Green Flash” took Cage’s prepared piano idiom beyond the piano while Lin’s interpretation of Cage’s 1944 “The Perilous Night,” one of the early prepared piano pieces, sounded like a classic.

While the attention was on Cage at the National Gallery, it was on Descharmes at the French Embassy. He’s an insightful, dynamic performer who is unquestionably committed to his craft, but somehow he kept the spotlight on himself.

The program (preceded by an illuminating lecture by Cage scholar Joan Retallack) opened with him lighting a match, which was used to ignite the recorded sounds of a burning campfire that filled the concert hall for no apparent reason as he played “Solo for Cello” and he and Lin performed Satie’s “Gnossienne” No. 3.

The program note revealed that a friend had likened the sound of the “Solo for Cello” to a burning campfire. That seems a highly questionable assertion, but even if it did, playing the sounds of a burning campfire during the piece is akin to playing a recording of the ocean during Debussy’s “La Mer.”

Descharmes’ arrangement of Pierre Boulez’s “Messagesquisse,” where he prerecorded the additional cello parts, was more successful, as was Cage’s “Etudes Boreales” with Steven Schick, where at last the cellist disappeared into the music (the program also included Beat Furrer’s “ferner Gesang” and Klaus Huber’s “…ruhe sanft…”).

Even though Descharmes didn’t play on his abbreviated arrangement of Satie’s "Vexations" (with Kalinkos and Lin), he relegated it to background music as he prepared himself on stage for the final piece, Cage’s “Music for Two” with violinist Irvine Arditti.

The “Music for Two” performance sounded definitive, save for the distracting slides of Gerhard Richter’s “Cage” series of paintings projected behind the performers. They were photographed by Descharmes.